In Chapter 2, of A People's History of the United States, Zinn argues that racism isn't natural; it's artificial. It is said that racism comes about...

In this
chapter, Zinn poses the question of whether the antagonism between blacks and whites is natural
or constructed. He answers that it is not natural, stating that in the American colonies in the
seventeenth century, white servants and black slaves, both despised classes, got along well. In
fact, they got along so well that laws were enacted to separate them, such as legislation
forbidding interracial marriage and providing for extra stiff penalties to white servants who
helped blacks escape.

Racism was socially constructed, Zinn argues, in
response to the pressing need for labor in the American colonies, the profits the slave trade
brought, and the need to control the slaves, who were naturally unhappy in their new condition.
In order to justify enslaving a group of people for life, whites had to develop a theory that
blacks were innately inferior, and they had separate poor whites from poor blacks because the
two groups could have joined together in a powerful bloc to confront the...